Protecting Westfield from East West Rail

Objection to the East West Rail Southern route 

The Countryside Regeneration Trust (CRT) remains firmly opposed to the southern route for the East West Rail link for its devastating effect on local ecology. The railway will cause severe damage to a formally recognised County Wildlife Site at Westfield, Lark Rise Farm, Comberton, Cambridgeshire. Following a rigorous review by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Sites Panel, with input from the Wildlife Trust, county and district councils, and other environmental organisations, Westfield was granted County Wildlife Site (CWS) status in 2025. This is the most significant designation available to semi-natural habitat outside statutory protections, such as SSSIs and SACs. 

The CWS designation was awarded specifically for Westfield’s exceptional assemblage of arable plants, one of the most threatened plant groups in the UK. Fourteen arable plant species of local or national significance have been recorded, including Night-flowering Catchfly (Silene noctiflora), Shepherd’s-needle (Scandix pecten-veneris), and Spreading Hedge-parsley (Torilis arvensis), all threatened with extinction both locally and nationally. 

The CRT’s long-term monitoring has also recorded approximately 20 per cent of all British bird species and nearly 50 per cent of all UK butterfly species at the site. Other species at risk include: 

• Red List farmland birds: grey partridge, corn bunting, lapwing, yellowhammer, linnet, and skylark. 

• Barn owls and golden plover, both highly vulnerable to train strike and construction disturbance. 

• Water voles, otters, and kingfishers along the Bourn Brook corridor, protected by over a decade of mink eradication work 

• A rich invertebrate community supporting the wider food web and 20 years of butterfly transect data 
   

Of particular legal significance is the confirmed presence of the Barbastelle bat (Barbastella barbastellus) at Westfield. The Barbastelle is classified as one of the UK’s rarest mammals by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and is fully protected under both UK and European legislation. The JNCC acknowledges that the species is likely significantly under-recorded, meaning every known active colony is of exceptional conservation importance. 

A Special Area of Conservation has been designated at Eversden and Wimpole Woods specifically for a strong population of Barbastelle Bats that use that area as a maternity site.  

This site is a mere 4km from the point at which the EWR proposed route crosses the Bourn Brook in Comberton, on CRT's Westfield Farm. Barbastelles are known to forage at much greater distances than this from their maternity roosts.  

The CRT's own monitoring work indicates that they visit Westfield on an almost daily basis during the active foraging period. This foraging behaviour is undoubtedly a result of the rich habitat created by CRT's sympathetic management of the land at Westfield.  

Proposed habitat improvements as part of EWR's mitigation for the railway would increase the attractiveness of the area to foraging by bats, but there are no clear proposals on how they would prevent lethal encounters between the bats and the trains at this crossing point. 

Placing a high-speed railway across this corridor, especially night trains that will be passing when the bats are at their most active, represents a potentially catastrophic impact on a species with very few known maternity colonies in the UK. Up to eight bat species in total have been recorded at Westfield, including Brown long-eared, Daubenton’s, Noctule, Serotine, Leisler’s, and both Pipistrelle species. They are all vulnerable to a train strike. 

The southern route, with its long curve from Cambourne to Shelford, cuts through an area of relatively undisturbed countryside, crossing the valleys of the Bourn Brook, River Rhee and River Cam, and cutting through the chalk ridge around Haslingfield.   

By comparison, the northern route would follow an already existing transport corridor. As such, there is a far greater environmental impact from the southern approach to Cambridge compared to the northern route.